For six years, I wrote columns that started with those eight simple but profound words. I have a friend; her name is Janet.

And she has breast cancer.

Today would have been her 60th birthday, had she lived.

She was only 36 when she got word. The disease was aggressive. It had already spread by the time she was diagnosed, by the time so many tests came back positive.

Treatment couldn’t wait.

She called as soon as she heard, long distance, one beautiful Saturday in October, just days from her birthday. I remember the stunned silence on both ends of the telephone, then the tears, the questions asked that couldn’t be answered and those that could, and finally the action.

No one needed to say out loud: This is a matter of life-and-death.

We all knew.

When she found out she had breast cancer, Janet was the mother of a 6-year-old daughter, starting a new life and new job in a new city. Friends forever, we were separated by a distance easily bridged. There were times we talked every day, sometimes more than once. I flew to Boston as often as I could. She waited for me at the airport when she felt well enough. On the days she didn’t, she was at the front door of her house, listening for my taxi or car to arrive, opening the door to let me in.

Every time we talked, every visit we had, I always asked: “What can I do to help?”

Like any friend, I cooked when needed. I cleaned. I spent time with her little girl when Janet was in the hospital or at the emergency room or sleeping. I ran errands. I listened. I left her alone when she needed space, kept quiet when she needed that. I laughed with her, when she needed that, too, not out of duty but because she was one of the funniest people ever to walk this Earth. I sat on the sofa next to her, as if life were normal, and watched movies by the hour or read fashion magazines, talking about life and love and eating pizza or cake with frosting.

Always, I’d ask: “What can I do?”

And she finally answered: “Write about me. Tell my story. Maybe it will help someone else.”

It was 1986, and we were on the cusp of the breast cancer awareness movement taking shape, spreading the word about a disease that took too many lives. For the first time, women were talking out loud about it. They were urging one another to get mammograms regularly, to ask questions routinely, to go for second opinions.

Janet was among those first voices raised, women aware of the power of story, knowing that human faces always eclipse medical statistics. She knew if she talked about what she was going through, it not only lessened her burden, it also enlightened the listener.

For too long, breast cancer had been hidden, not talked about as if it were somehow shameful. Women like my friend Janet brought the disease out of the shadows of secrecy.

She dared to talk, and she implored others to do the same.

Other causes learned quickly from those involved in the breast cancer awareness movement. There is no greater way to spread the word than one story at a time.

So I write: I have a friend; her name was Janet. When she was 42 years old, she died after a long struggle, living with breast and, later, ovarian cancer. She left a daughter, family and friends who loved her without end.

And she left us the greatest gift there is: her story; her life to remember.